Parents' Mental Illness Leads To Autism In Kids

Parents with mental illnesses, especially with schizophrenia, are more likely to have kids with autism.

A study conducted by University of North Carolina researchers involved Sweden families with children born between 1977 and 2003. The study involved 1227 children who were autism diagnosed and 31000 healthy children.

The research found that parents suffering from schizophrenia are twice as likely to have kids with autism. The research also found that mental illnesses in mothers, such as depression and personality disorders, have the least impact on child's mental health. Parents with alcohol or drug addiction showed no affect on autism risk.

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Autism affects 1 out of 150 US children. It is a condition when children have difficulties in communication and social interaction. The causes for this mental condition are unknown. Some experts think that the main cause is vaccination, but most health professionals and organizations completely decline this hypothesis, saying that vaccination is safe.

This new research comes to prove previous opinions that autism has a genetic background and it is not caused only by environmental factors. More needs to be done to understand how psychiatric conditions in parents genetically affect children's risk to have autism.

When two people find out they are going to have a baby life, as they know it, seemingly stands still. Whether or not your child is going to have autism tends to not cross one's mind. Seems no one thinks about autism until they have to sit in a doctor’s office and be told that a family member, a friend’s child, or their child is autistic. When you look at it from the other side it seems that once a parent has been told their child has autism all they can do is look for reasons why it’s their fault, especially at first.

All of us parents of autistic children know the stresses of raising them, especially a non-verbal autistic child. I had that pleasure for half of my son’s life. He was non-verbal and extremely violent to himself and to me, he still is sometimes. Raising him during that point in time was unbearable it seemed, mostly because it’s an impossibility to get the support you need when you are in the parents shoes. The thing is, not one time did it or has it crossed my mind that the only way “out” is to murder my child [whether due to stress or unrealistic beliefs.

An autistic boy who disappeared in Baker County was found in the woods, but he is in critical condition. The family of Peyton Blodgett shares the 8-year-old was included in a Florida Missing Child Alert, and an estimated 300 people searched for him. However, his health remains an issue, so he has not been released from a hospital.